I have admired Mrs.
Kemi Adeosun, the Minister of Finance, from a distance. She speaks English the
way the Queen of England speaks even though she seems to add a bit of cockney
accent to it. She is good with figures which I am not good at which is one
reason I chose the writing craft as my life-long engagement. She shows
competence, diligence, substantial eloquence and some level of transparency in
her work. So I was thrilled to meet her on May 5, 2016 at the Chinese
Restaurant, OPIC Plaza, next door to the Sheraton Hotel in Ikeja.
She was one of the
four ministers that came to meet with the media chieftains of the Newspaper
Proprietors’ Association of Nigeria (NPAN). They came to explain at a town hall
meeting what the Federal Government had been doing – and not doing – since it
took over the Aso Villa a year earlier. She displayed a gutsy performance and I
thought she was a courageous young lady. I asked her, not entirely jokingly,
whether she had a bullet proof vest because of her trenchant and frontal attack
on tax evaders and avoiders and her extirpation of thousands of ghosts from the
payroll of the Federal Government. Since then my admiration for her has
remained high.
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| *President Buhari and Kemi Adeosun |
